Although probably not intentionally imbued with a double meaning, the title of this hyper-charged, hyperreal (hyper-everything, pretty much) action-comedy-fantasy refers to the “stretch” limousine the protagonist Kevin (Patrick Wilson) drives for a living but could easily refer to the substantial “stretch” one’s imagination has to make to buy into most of what takes place in this Joe Carnahan-directed carnal mess of a movie. In fact about the only thing believable about Stretch is that Kevin is a debt-ridden, underconfident, failing actor living in LA unhappily chauffeuring rich jerks around (Goodfellas star Ray Liotta being one of them) while trying to outrun a nasty cocaine-and-gambling addiction (evidently considered excessive even for his Tinseltown social milieu). And to boot, and his sexy girlfriend (Brooklyn Decker) has just left him for your average run-of-the-mill multi-millionaire NFL football star.
As it happens, he’s also about to lose his miserable limo-driver job as well, as his company’s being undercut by the rival limo service in town, led by a freakish car-service mogul known ridiculously as “the Jovi.” And if that’s not enough pressure, Kevin also owes $6000 in gambling debts to a local scumbag bookie who’s constantly threatening him with all kinds of painful bodily harm. Suffice to say, he’s got nothing left to lose at this point—except his job and possibly his kneecaps. It’s at this desperate juncture where opportunity knocks in the form of an eccentric new client: a scraggly postmodern Howard Hughes-type cokehead billionaire (Chris Pine) who needs to run a few shady errands (he makes his entrance skydiving naked onto the top of Kevin’s limo).
Seeing an opportunity to maybe collect a few thousand bucks in tips, Kevin proceeds to enter a nightmarish Hollywood night world, dodging killer tow truckers, FBI agents, murderous nightclub bouncers, and an annoying Vanilla Ice-like rapper and his obnoxious entourage, among other madcap twists and turns of fate. For all the film’s visual pyrotechnics and stylish Coen Brothers-meets-Michael Mann plot lunacy, Stretch’s conventional boy-gets-girl ending is little more than saccharine Old Hollywood wish-fulfillment fantasy. Optional.